Entrepreneurship

Emilee (BSc '08) and Jeff Alpaugh make their living helping people dress dangerously.

At their new store in Waterloo, Jeff Alpaugh Custom, the pair helped their guest Nick Manning design a custom dress shirt for a big date with his wife.

Did Nick enter the danger zone, or did he dress with caution? Let's find out. 

Want to look dangerously good?

Follow these three tips.

1)  Pair a dangerous shirt with a suit and a white tie.

In the world of startups, the University of Waterloo’s incubator Velocity is a giant. Velocity has helped launch over 300 companies with a remarkably vast array of business models and technologies that have received more than $1 billion in investment. It supported the creation of some of 2019s fastest growing startups and most recently launched Concept, a campus-focused pre-incubator to further encourage students to learn about scaling their ideas into a business.

Waterloo alumni make their mark on Hollywood with their creativity and technical innovation. 

Take a peek into the world of filmmaking and see why these graduates were recognized with Oscars for their achievements. 

Back in the day — think of your grandparents' time and before — people would stuff a few dollars into some jam jars each week as a way of budgeting for expenses and saving for big-ticket purchases from Christmas presents to a new sofa.

It was an easy and free way to see funds go in — and out — of the jars and to make sure there was enough for all the different expenses and, crucially, that you didn’t inadvertently overspend.

Jenise Lee’s passion for cancer prevention inspired her to help health-conscious consumers make informed skincare choices.

The engineering alumnus has founded two Canadian companies over the past five years to raise awareness of skincare creams and other products formulated without potentially harmful chemicals.

Growing up, the idea of becoming an entrepreneur was not on Lee’s radar and it still wasn’t when she completed her Waterloo degree in chemical engineering in 2006.

Mark Tigchelaar attended the grand opening of Columbia Icefield Field House last September as a guest whose University of Waterloo education and student team experience helped ensure the building started off on a solid footing.

The engineering graduate’s company, GeoSolv Design/Build Inc., developed a low carbon footprint ground improvement system for the structure, a new 65,000 square-foot athletics and recreation space located north of the University’s Warrior Field.

“How did you do it all?” 

This is a question often asked of me when people learn about my journey through a social services career, working on my BA in social development studies and starting my own business, Sekond Skin Studios. There is no short answer to that question, but I do offer a few key elements that helped me get through my university program while starting up my business. 

Some people follow the career paths they began with, but many end up in places they never could have imagined. Keep reading to see how Waterloo alumni are making their mark on their industries.

Building a student community 

The flying car might be closer than we think.

In a warehouse down the road from Waterloo’s main campus, Abi Chandrasekhar (BASc in progress) and Gonzalo Espinoza Graham (BASc ’19) are building a prototype of a single-passenger aircraft. In it, they see the potential to revolutionize urban transportation.